Becoming A Winner: How Business Leaders Can Follow A 'Win-To-Win' Cycle

In life and in business, only winners are winners. I believe when people and organizations experience a win, they are more likely to continue winning. One?Harvard Business Review?article suggests that winners can?gain a number of advantages ?when they succeed that can, ultimately, help them achieve more wins.

Getting to the first win is critical, but building sustainable "success momentum" is what can help a winner remain a winner. Every success requires planning and action to be turned into reality. From my perspective, success momentum is built when you're able to shorten the time it takes you to turn an idea into reality. And, in turn, the value of your win expands.

Of course, a winner is never shielded from failure. However, you can?learn from a loss ?to directly influence your next win. In every success journey, failures are hidden along the way. These failures can fuel your success momentum with energy and knowledge.

Leaders who are winners begin by believing before committing and executing. They also realize that a win is never certain because no plan is ever perfect. They remain prepared for failure and stand ready to receive its gift of intelligence. Winners are ready to roll with the punches; they care about measuring the direction, intensity and effectiveness of plans but remain alert about change and reality. Finally, winners who seek to build success momentum fully understand the need to evolve their beliefs, commitments and actions because the world around them is always in flux, and success is never static.

Here is what a win-to-win cycle looks like:

Believe

To believe is not to blindly trust. To truly believe in your vision of a future, path or idea, you must judge and dispute. The key is to examine facts, situations, capabilities and alternative opportunities. Before you can wholeheartedly commit to a decision or an action, you must know that your resolution and judgment are sound and that the direction ahead offers the highest probability of success. Your commitment to a decision is a direct function of your degree of belief in the likelihood that the desired outcome can be realized.

In other words, to secure a win, start by believing in a well-examined idea, path and plan for your business. This idea should be achievable and not just an elusive “big audacious hairy goal.”

Commit

A commitment without a solid defensible belief is the genesis of a failed execution. The next step to believing that a path is the right one to follow is to commit to pursuing it with vigor. If it is the right thing to do, then make every commitment and effort to do it. That means committing to specific activities and timelines as well as investments, resources and sacrifices. Commit to change processes, systems and people as needed to increase the likelihood of success.

For example, simply saying, "Honey let’s get married," is not a commitment. Your commitment could be demonstrated by buying a ring, setting a specific date to marry, booking the location for the ceremony, etc.

To actuate a commitment is to trigger and organizationally impose coordinated and connected actions based on a clear and tested belief.

Actuate

"An object at rest remains at rest, and an object in motion remains in motion," according to Isaac Newton's?first law of motion . The mindset to activate an idea or realize a vision requires both initiation (taking an “object at rest” to movement) and stewardship at every level (to collectively ensure the object stays in motion).

To connect belief and commitment to reality, coordinated decisions must be made and related actions measured. To get results, have clear decision priorities (importance), decision cycles (speed) and decision measurement systems (effectiveness). While assignments of specific processes and outcomes are made to individuals, ownership of the vision and broader results belong to everyone. When one wins, all win.

Position your company to achieve “success momentum” by keeping it in motion and caring about incremental progress.

Care

To care is “to be attentive to” and “worry about.” It is to nurture, upkeep, repair and revive. To be able to care, aim to be continuously intelligent about the status, behavior, well-being, progress and regress of your plan and its execution.

To drive your vision and beliefs toward reality, it is critical to commit and actuate. To see it flourish, care for everyone, every system and every decision at every step—always. Monitor progress in a connected and consistent manner to preserve trust. Measure your belief, strategy and actions, not just outcomes.

Constantly evaluate and adjust. Examine and re-examine realized or anticipated failures. Be constantly aware of your organizational and individual biases; these are the orthodoxies that impede progress and force the organization back to the sameness of the past. Be very aware of claims such as, "We have tried it before," "It would not work here," "Don’t fix it if isn’t broken," "This too shall pass," etc.

Along the way, celebrate successes, but don’t let them derail you. Don’t let progress push you toward false complacency and loss of momentum; remember, only winners are winners as long as they are in motion.

Evolve

To stay a winner, you must follow the cycle all the way from belief to your next leap. The world is in constant flux; your customers, your employees and your business are subject to mutability. To win and win again, you need a “change-centric” mindset. From my perspective, you need to believe that without change, your options and choices in life and business could dwindle.